Taiwanese Store So Bizarre to Make You Flea Markets

     We went to Chung-Yo Department Store in Taichung for lunch and to stores near Yi-Zhong Street. While she perused the clothing stalls, I waited for her in Eslite Bookstore having an iced- coffee and looking through their used 199-$6.63 LP’s; they have new ones, too, but they are ridiculously expensive, $50 or more for single LP’s, to satisfy a high-end audiophile fad.

     These are the selections I bought:

1.        Porgy and Bess – S.M. Goldman & Houston Grand Opera (3 CD)*

2.     The Poetry of Wordsworth – Read by Sir Cedric Hardwicke

3.     Dvorek’s New World Symphony – Horenstein & Royal Philharmonic

4.     Paul Robeson in Live Performance; In London and New York 1958.

The Porgy & Bess Box Set of three LP's contained a Playbill and numerous articles from the New York Times reviewing the production of the show at Radio City Music Hall in 1974. Someone had lovingly clipped them from the newspaper and they remained inside the box being shipped, in bulk weight, with other out-of-print LP's for sale in Taiwan.
   While I was there, I also bought a used discounted book entitled Paris Versus New York. It was on a display supporting an upcoming production in the Taichung Opera House of “An American in Paris”. It was 462-$15.40 and looked interesting but there was shrink-wrap around it and I couldn’t see the contents. It looked like there might be text and photos inside the hardcover. When we left the department store, I put our packages into the car in the parking garage but brought the book with me to read if we had to wait long for the doctor. 
   When we sat in the waiting room I removed the shrink-wrap and opened it up discovering simplistic colored drawings of Paris and New York City iconic structures and buildings, one on one, with the words for them in French and English. There was no text or photos. It was not what I expected. Since the department store was nearby and we had time to wait, I walked back with the book and receipt hoping to get credit or my money back. I was in for a surprise.

I approached the counter in the bookstore, told a man in his thirties I didn’t like the book, and showed him my receipt. He took it and looked carefully. I could not, he said, get a refund because the book was discounted and no return was allowed. I could live with that. I asked for a store credit. Surely he could add the 462 into our Eslite account. He said he could not; I would have to buy other items of equal or greater value, right on the spot. In New York, I had never heard of such a thing; every store either gives you a refund, if cash was spent, or a store credit if you cannot actually get a refund for a used item. Okay, I thought, I could handle this. I went back to the rack of used LP’s and found two that I had initially chose but decided not to buy; Dvorek’s “New World Symphony” and Paul Robeson’s last performance in the U.S. before his passport was revoked and his first performance in England afterwards; total cost: 398. That left 64. I returned to the stoic clerk at the counter. Could he refund me 64? No. Could I leave 64 for the kitty? No. I had to make purchases equal or greater than that value.

     Before I go on, let me explain my predicament: I had 22 New Taiwan Dollars in my pocket 73 cents U.S. It’s true that I had a wallet with credit cards but I didn’t want to use them and there was nothing else I was interested in buying at Eslite that day; I merely wanted the two LP’s I had initially chosen, anyway, and leave to rejoin my wife waiting at the hospital. In so many Mandarin words, the clerk looked seriously into my Jewish eyes as if to say, ‘You are going nowhere until you spend 64NT, buddy.’ But what could I buy in a bookstore for $2.04 U.S. cents, I asked. I could go downstairs to the stationary department and look, he replied.  Shrugging my shoulders with the thought that this clerk (possibly the manager) was enjoying annoying this fluent foreigner, I went, I saw, and returned with a phosphorescent green 65 NT-$2.05 German pencil. I threw in a Taiwan dollar to make up the difference. He was stymied more than proud of me when he scanned the bar code and I didn’t know why. Then he revealed his quagmire: there was a 10% discount on the pencil; I had 5 NT coming to me. Keep it, I said; what can I buy for 5 NT-16 cents, but he wasn’t hearing it. Instead, he called an associate and told her to go downstairs and look for me. Meanwhile, three customers were lined up behind me. He raised his arm with his out-held hand inches from my face directing them to the other clerk, the young associate who he had just returned with my 16 cent eraser employing her as cashier while he tallied my purchases. After what must have been half an hour, he was done, I was whole, and he put the two record albums, pencil, and eraser into a free strap-handled paper bag.

This ridiculous policy in all Taiwanese franchises apply to credit card purchases, too. One cannot get a card credit or cash return on returned discontinued items; one must endure the indignity of acting like a penny-pincher on their behalf and waste time they could be doing other things. The lesson I have learned is this: In Taiwan, don’t judge a book by its cover; tell the clerk to remove the shrink wrap to check the contents before you buy a nonreturnable discounted item or you will find out why Taiwanese admire and try to emulate Jewish people; they beat us to the punch with Taiwanese so bazaar to make you flea markets.  

www.readingsandridings.jimdo.com

Copyright © 2019 by David Barry Temple. All rights reserved